Brandon Wilson stars as Turner in director RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, from Orion Pictures. Photo credit: Courtesy of Orion Pictures. © 2024 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Artist-turned-director RaMell Ross’ beautiful, innovative, and moving adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Nickel Boys is an immersive, emotional experience that uses a Pov camera to put you into the first-person experience of two young Black boys, Elwood and Turner, and the bonds of friendship that grow between them after they meet at a Jim Crow-era reform school in Florida, a brutal place known as the Nickel Academy.

Although this is RaMell Ross’ first film, the artist’s directorial debut is strong, showing an unexpected mastery of cinematic art. Nickel Boys is a remarkable film, a moving human drama about childhood friendship in the Jim Crow South between two very different Black boys who nonetheless form a powerful bond. Scenes have a painterly beauty,...